Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster Loss Recovery

of Households: Experience from Bangladesh

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka

International Conference on Social Cohesion and

Development, January 20-21, 2011, Paris, France

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 1
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Introduction

Natural disasters increase poverty and deprivation of

people of affected areas.
Negative effects are not equal for all households.
Natural disaster on assets are relatively longer term and
more acute for the lowest wealth group than other wealth
groups in the society.
Due to the natural disaster, some of the lower strata
households fall into perpetual poverty traps without
having a very little hope of escaping it.
The extent of recovery of lost assets also depends on the
access to local markets and institutions.
M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury
University of Dhaka 2
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Introduction

If the markers are full and complete, all households have

the same access to local markets and institutions.

HHs can use loan and insurance contracts for coping with
assets and income losses caused by the natural disasters.

The loans and insurance contracts help households to

rebuild their lost assets quickly.

In developing countries, markets-especially credit and

insurance markets-are not full and complete.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 3
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Introduction

Formal sector credit and insurance markets are not

available in many areas in developing countries, specially
in Bangladesh.

For this reason, HHs depend on informal risk sharing

mechanisms, such as mutual insurance, for mitigating and
recovering natural disaster losses.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 4
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Social Capital and Natural Disaster

The success of a household in terms of the effective

utilization of informal credit and insurance contracts for
recovering natural disaster losses depends on the level of
social capital it posses
Putnam (1995) defines social capital as the co-operation
and mutually supportive relations in communities and
nations.
The households in a network with a higher level of social
capital are expected to help each other within the network
when they face adverse shocks (Fafchamps and Lund,
2002).

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 5
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Social Capital and Natural Disaster

Carter and Maluccio (2003) finds that trust at the

community level, an indicator of the level of social
capital, has a positive impact on the mitigation of weather
shocks on the nutritional status of children in South
Africa.

Mongues (2006) suggests that the social network plays a

positive role in the recovery and growth of asset of
households after environmental shocks in Ethiopia.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 6
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Social Cohesion

Social capital is limited compared to social cohesion as it

does not incorporate the issue of the distribution of
opportunities in an area.

Due to this, this paper aims to assess effects of social

cohesion of natural disaster loss recovery.

Following Maxell (1996), this paper defines social

cohesion as building shared values and communities of
interpretation, reducing disparities in wealth and income,
and generally enabling people to have a sense that they
are engaged in a common enterprise, facing shared
challenges, and that they are members of the same
community.
M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury
University of Dhaka 7
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Econometric model
Yij SCI j X ij Z j ui
Yij SCI j COVRISK X ij Z j ui

Yij SCI j COVRISK SCI * COVRISK X ij Z j ui

Where
Yij = The extent of HHs disaster loss recovery;
SCIj= Village level social cohesion index;
COVRISKj= Village level disaster covariant risk;
Xi = A vector of household socio-economic
characteristics; and
Zi = A vector of village-level characteristics;

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 8
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Social cohesion index

There is no single universally accepted measure for social

cohesion .
This paper constructs a social cohesion index (SCI)
through taking into consideration three components:
social capital, material condition, and social order.
The village level social capital incorporates the number of
social organizations in the village.
The material condition dimension of social cohesion
looks into the issue of income variations among
households in the village.
The social order dimension considers peace and security
in the village.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 9
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Data

The analysis is based on a household-level survey of

randomly selected two thousand six hundred and eighty
(N=2680) households from 140 villages in different parts
of the country.

Besides information on social cohesion, and natural

disaster loss and recovery, the survey collected detailed
information at the household as well as village level.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 10
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Results

Table 1.
Disaster Loss as % of total household assets
by socio-economic status of households

No. of Total household Disaster loss Loss as % of

Socio-economic observations assets total assets
Class Mean S.D. Mean S.D.

(1) (2) (1) (2) (3)/(1)

Hardcore poor 1341 41,485 87,376 23,548 65,148 0.57

Poor 808 71,287 11,8201 34,499 61,183 0.48

Non-poor 489 221,357 717,771 49,372 91,275 0.22

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 11
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Table 2
Disaster Loss recovery as % of total disaster loss by Socio-Economic
Status of Households

Socio-economic No. of Disaster loss Loss recovery Extent of

Class observations Mean S.D. Mean S.D. loss
recovery
(1) (2) (3) (4) (3)/(1)
Hardcore poor 1341 23,548 65,148 4,175 10,262 0.18
Poor 808 34,499 61,183 5,780 12,007 0.17
Non-poor 489 49,372 91,275 7,371 17,780 0.15

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 12
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Table 3
Disaster Loss recovery as % of total disaster loss by disaster area

Area No. of Disaster loss Loss recovery Extent of

observations Mean S.D. Mean S.D. loss
recovery
(1) (2) (3) (4) (3)/(1)
Non-disaster area 269 8,530 77,817 1,862 12,543 0.22
Disaster area-flood 1077 25,050 24,405 4,986 9,207 0.19
Disaster area-SIDR 1292 42,044 68,266 6,193 13,037 0.15

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 13
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster
Table 5
OLS estimates of disaster loss recovery

Explanatory Dependent variable: extent of household disaster loss

Variables recovery
(1) (2) (3)
SCI 0.259*** 0.279*** 0.540*
COVRISK 0.160*** 0.213***
SCI * COVRISK -0.332
Constant 0.105* -0.0108 -0.0553
Observations 2588 2588 2588
R-squared 0.070 0.078 0.078

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 14
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster
Table 5
OLS estimates of disaster loss recovery
Explanatory Dependent variable: extent of household disaster loss recovery
Variables
(1) (2) (3)
EMPAG -0.0649*** -0.0608*** -0.0608***
LANDNIRR 2.42e-07** 2.42e-07** 2.43e-07**
INCPC -7.11e-07** -7.02e-07** -7.14e-07**
LOANCB -1.07e-06** -1.15e-06** -1.13e-06**
LOANCBO 2.88e-06* 2.94e-06* 2.90e-06*
RIVERERO 0.000269*** 0.000205** 0.000198**
NHHS 7.66e-05*** 6.62e-05*** 6.60e-05***
HOMELESS -6.08e-05 -0.000104** -9.83e-05**
SCHOOL -0.00266 -0.00425* -0.00404*
FLOOD 0.159*** 0.143*** 0.145***
SIDR 0.0760*** 0.0563** 0.0573**
Constant 0.105* -0.0108 -0.0553
Observations 2588 2588 2588
R-squared 0.070 0.078 0.078

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 15
 Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Conclusion

There is a significant positive relationship between the

village level social cohesion and the natural disaster loss
recovery of households.

This paper also finds that social cohesion is less effective

in those villages where the natural disaster is highly
covariant.

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 16
Social Cohesion and Natural Disaster

Thanks

M. Jahangir Alam Chowdhury

University of Dhaka 17